WikiWord
From Collaboratory
A WikiWord consists of two or more words with initial capitals, run together. This is also known as an upper camel case compound word. For example, "WikiWord."
The original Wiki and its descendants automatically recognize WikiWords as links to pages with the same names. When you type a WikiWord, you establish a hyperlink. It's Link As You Think.
Some Wikis have turned off the WikiWord feature (notably MediaWiki and Socialtext). There are good reasons for doing so, but WikiWords also have subtle but valuable emergent properties. Bill Seitz tries to get the best of both worlds with his Wiki: the Wiki displays WikiWords as separate words. It seems to work okay for the most part, but you also have problems with words like "TransClusion" looking like "Trans Clusion." There is some question as to whether one should be forming pseudo-WikiWords like TransClusion in the first place. Also, do you lose some of the value of WikiWords if they're not displayed as WikiWords?
WikiWords are styled like this because:
- It makes Wiki hyperlinks instantly recognizable
- It leads to interesting Wiki topics
- It avoids the need to fiddle with HTML tags
- It avoids over-general topics because at least two words are required
Syntax of a WikiWord:
- Uppercase letter(s)
- Lowercase letter(s)
- Uppercase letter(s)
- Optional lowercase or uppercase letter(s) or number(s)
Good examples for WikiWords:
- WikiWord
- Good Style
- A Very Long Wiki Topic Name Is Also Possible: wherever an uppercase or lowercase letter is allowed, a group of letters of the same case is allowed
- Year Two Thousand
Bad examples for WikiWords:
- Web: Name without the uppercase letter(s), lowercase letter(s), uppercase letter(s) sequence
- T5Wiki: Name with number before the uppercase, lowercase, uppercase sequence
- Md5sumsAfter Burning: Name with number before the uppercase, lowercase, uppercase sequence
- Know-How: Name with dashes in between
Hints
- Insert WikiWords wherever you can. Rich linking helps to make a Wiki successful.
- Be specific. All topics in a web share one name space. For example, instead of Functional Spec write Bread Slicer Functional Spec because other projects might also have a functional spec topic.
